Page 81 of Fortune's Blade

But he had never understood that, had only sought to contain the creature who was threatening the only daughter he had ever acknowledged or cared for.

The only one that he still did.

“That isn’t true,” he said sharply, and for a moment, there was real emotion there, not the cultivated calm he showed everyone else.

Did I scratch him? Did he bleed? No, I thought, searching his face.

No, not for me.

For wounded pride, perhaps—

And there it was again, and still, I couldn’t read it. A flash of something in his eyes gone too quick. But it didn’t matter.

Not anymore.

“It does matter,” he grasped my upper arm when I started to turn away, and I liked that we both knew that his hand only remained there because I allowed it. For my whole life, he had been the stronger, the one who made the rules, the one whose stubborn refusal to listen had left me crying in the dark.

But he couldn’t control me anymore. Not here in Faerie, and maybe not anywhere. I was growing, changing, and he didn’t like it.

“I don’t like the fact that we know nothing about this,” he said sharply. “Kit put it badly but he wasn’t wrong. So much happened today, and we understand very little of it. Do not make a hasty decision you may regret—”

“Regret?” I turned on him again, and pushed off his hold without effort. “What do you think I am likely to regret? Not being a slave anymore? Not that Dory made me that, but you did. I was nothing; I was her servant, her lackey, her protector, and I thought I deserved it because I had hurt her! I had been the monster growing under her skin like some kind of cancer. I had deprived her of a normal life, of friends, of her rightful place in our society. She should have been a little princess, petted and pampered, but instead, she was shivering with cold, half starved, eating dogs’ leavings and glad to get them and it was all because of me!

“Only it wasn’t because of me.

“I didn’t do that, not any of it.” I heard the wonder in my own voice, because it only now hit me, the implication of what Nimue had said, that dying queen of the fey who had finally told me the truth. “I’m not a dhampir. Her struggles were not because of me. I don’t know what I am, but it wasn’t my fault—”

“It was,” Mircea said, surprising me. And enraging, because this was the part where he groveled. This was the part where he begged. And apologized and meant it, and despite the fact that I had just thought that I didn’t want one, I realized that I did. I craved an apology, a real one, and more than that, I deserved it!

“You do, but not from me,” he said, effortlessly reading my thoughts, and grasping both of my arms now as though he would make me listen. “From whoever did those experiments on your mother, from whoever made you like this—”

“Like what?” I stared at him, uncomprehending. “What is so wrong with me? I am not vampire; I am not human; I am not even dhampir. But I am not trash!”

“I never said you were.”

“Not said, no, but treated me as that and worse than that—”

“You were ripping your sister apart!” The dark eyes flashed. “I didn’t know what else to do—”

“And didn’t ask! Didn’t listen—”

“You may hate me for what I did if you like, but it saved you both—yes, you, too! Had she died, you would have died with her. I would have lost both of you—”

“So, you sacrificed one.”

Mircea’s face changed, and yes, there was pride there, and pain, and disbelief that I still didn’t understand.

When I did, and better than him.

“I did what I had to do,” he told me stiffly. “The only thing I knew to do. Should I have let you die?”

I thought back to the long years of what I wouldn’t call a life, wouldn’t know what to call it. And didn’t know the answer to that. I just didn’t know.

Some of my thoughts must have leeched through, because the dark eyes softened as he watched me. “I will say this,” he said. “And mean it. I am sorry for the life you’ve lived, or have not been allowed to live. I am sorry for fearing you instead of trying harder to understand you. I am sorry for prioritizing one child over the other, for not even realizing for a long time that I had another.

“I am truly sorry for all of it.

“And you are right; you are not dhampir. But that is the point. We do not fully understand what you are, merely what Nimue told you. But even if she spoke truly, we do not know the extent of your abilities or their weaknesses. And a lack of knowledge has caused misunderstandings and hardship in the past. Before you decide anything, we must first—”